In recent years, a monitoring camera has been installed in an apartment, a house, and the like, so as to prevent a suspicious individual from intruding into a building. In addition, the monitoring camera is mainly installed at a street corner, in a park, and the like, of a new town, so that neighborhood residents can watch a monitored image inside. In this way, a parent, being at home, can check on a child playing in the park and the like so that the parent can let the child play outside without a fear.
On the other hand, a widespread use of the monitoring camera may bring about a privacy issue. That is to say, people are subject to monitoring by the monitoring camera installed at various places in town or in the park. As a result, there is a chance that a third person may constantly follow each person's movements.
Therefore, it is desired that a mechanism achieves not only a maintenance of security and a sense of safety by installing the monitoring camera but also a protection of privacy of the object monitored by the above-mentioned monitoring camera.
As one of systems for realizing such mechanism, there is a monitoring camera system disclosed in a Patent Reference 1.
According to the system described in the Patent Reference 1, a specific person's face image is previously registered on the system. In the case where the registered face image is detected in monitored video of the monitoring camera, video in which the face image is obscured by a mosaic is outputted to a video display device of the monitoring camera system.
According to this system, registering face images of people (e.g. house, apartment, or neighborhood residents) who do not want to be monitored by the monitoring camera allows all the people's face images in a monitored image to be obscured by the mosaic. This way, as the house, apartment, or neighborhood residents' faces are designed not to be shown in the monitored video, the residents' privacy can be protected.
Patent Reference 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-62560.